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Plan of Rome (Nuova pianta di Roma) Gallery   A selection from DUMA

By Giambattista Nolli (Italian, 1701-1756), etching on 12 sheets combined; index on additional 8 sheets, 1748.

Among the new Duke University Museum of Art acquisitions is a monumental 1748 map of Rome, currently on display, remarkable for its intricate detail and its precision in rendering the urban fabric of the Eternal City during the mid-eighteenth century. Colossal in size, the map was printed from twenty oversized etched plates, assembled to framed dimensions of approximately seven by nine feet. It was the creation of Giambattista Nolli (1701-1756), who had trained as a surveyor in his native Piedmont region of Italy and worked in Milan before coming to Rome in the 1730s. Beginning in 1736, Nolli engaged in a twelve-year project to survey and measure the city’s buildings, structures, and sites, culminating in this Nuova pianta di Roma (New Plan of Rome), often called the Pianta grande (Great Plan). Nolli’s groundplan of the entire city included the layouts of all its buildings, gardens, streets, and plazas, from antiquity to the eighteenth century. The use of the plan format for a city map was unusual at a time when most depictions of cities were presented as aerial (i.e., “bird’s eye”) views, emphasizing the three-dimensional appearance and skyline of a cityscape as if seen from a distance. Nolli goes even further in defining the city in terms of its public and semi-public spaces. Its ancient and modern monuments, its churches, theaters, gardens, plazas, streets, and passageways that were accessible to visitors, are all depicted in white; private structures and spaces are hatched in dark gray. Architectural groundplans are incorporated for these public structures, sculptural fountains, and spaces, such as for St. Peter’s Cathedral with its piazza designed by Bernini, the Farnese Palace, and the Trevi Fountain. Also included are plans of the ancient archaeological sites, such as the Baths of Diocletian and the Colosseum, designating the restorations in white. The Nolli map thus documents the eighteenth-century fabric of Rome as a cultural and artistic site, when the city was the ultimate destination among European intelligentsia on the Grand Tour. It complements the museum’s recently acquired Capriccio of ancient Roman ruins painted by Panini and its holdings of prints by Piranesi, Nolli’s colleague and sometime collaborator. Directly related to the eighteenth-century fascination with the topography of Rome is the museum’s c. 1750 etching by Piranesi, depicting a portion of the Forma Urbis Romae, an ancient map carved from marble that had been excavated in the sixteenth century. Where Piranesi focused on the grandeur of the ancient city, Nolli gave equal weight in his map to the city’s past and present. In the lower left of Nolli’s plan is a personification of Roma, surrounded by views of ancient buildings; a tribute to the monumental accomplishments of modern papal Rome is presented in the lower right.

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